Kenneth Downing

Kenneth H. Downing

December 23, 1945 - August 2, 2018

On August 2, 2018, Ken passed away at home with his family after a ten year battle with colon cancer. He was born December 23, 1945 in Chelsea, MA. He spent his early years in Waltham and Weston, MA. Ken earned all his degrees through PhD. at Cornell University, NY. While a sophomore, he met his future wife, Linda, on a ride share. They married in 1974 and spent an extended honeymoon for 3 years in Zurich while Ken did postdoctoral research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
In 1977 he began his lifelong career at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Over the next 41 years, Ken contributed widely to the development of high-resolution electron microscopy of biological macromolecules, now the most powerful way to understand the structures of the biochemical "machines" that carry out the diverse functions of living cells. By the 1980's, Ken was drawn into major international collaborations, resulting in paradigm-setting papers on the atomic structures of two membrane proteins. His own research group determined the structure of tubulin in 1998, a protein that helps determine cell shape and motility, and which is essential for the separation of chromosomes during cell division. His revolutionary studies gave us the conceptual and structural framework to understand a unique self-assembly system and a major target of anticancer agents. With his microscopy and image analysis he described the binding site and mode of action of the most broadly used anticancer agent, taxol, as well as new antimitotic agents of great therapeutic potential, and defined the structure of the microtubule among other contributions.
In terms of professional friends and "family," Ken is "survived" by many co-workers, colleagues and peers around the world, who bonded deeply with him for his experimental skills, integrity, kindness and intellect, as well as by his many "scientific children" - students and postdocs trained in his lab. Ken has served on several editorial boards of scientific journals, advisory committees, and was President of the Microscopy Society of America, from which he received the Distinguished Scientist Award in 2016. The previous year he received the Berkeley Lab Prize (Lifetime Achievement Award) from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
Ken loved his family time, gardening, building an extensive model railroad layout, and woodworking. He was an excellent water skier and avid hiker. At church he sang in the choir, and pondered the big questions with the Science and Religion class.
He is survived by his wife of 44 years, Linda, his daughters Sonja and Valerie and their respective spouses Dewa and Paul, his sister Barbara, his brother Doug, and three granddaughters.
The family would like to thank all the staff at Kaiser and Kaiser Hospice who cared for Ken, and their friends at Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church where a Memorial Service in his name will be held Sept. 1 at 11 am. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Lawrence Hall of Science.